educator

This special edition features stories from the High School Division of the 2018 HIKI NŌ Fall Challenge. On October 19, 2018, ten participating high school teams and twelve participating middle school teams were given four days to complete a HIKI NŌ story based on the theme “the story behind the food”. Teachers could not provide hands-on help. The students had to conceptualize, research, arrange, shoot, write and edit their stories on their own. The completed stories were scored by members of the HIKI NŌ editorial board based on the following criteria:

How well did the story capture the essence of the assigned theme?

How well did the entry fulfill the HIKI NŌ Story Criteria (the criteria used throughout the school year to determine which stories are approved to air on HIKI NŌ)?

How much did production values (the quality of the cinematography, editing and sound) contribute to the overall effectiveness of the story?

Based on the cumulative scores, first place, second place, third place, and honorable mention awards were given in both the high school and middle school divisions. The winning high school stories featured in this episode are as follows:

–Tied for First Place: Kaua‘i High School in Lihue profiled the late Barbara Funamura, the originator of the spam musubi.

–Tied for First Place: Kamehameha Schools Maui High School in Pukalani profiled Maui chef Jonathan Mizukami.

–Second Place: H.P. Baldwin High School on Maui featured the family story behind Aunty Lia’s Baked Goods.

–Third Place: Kapa‘a High School on Kaua‘i spotlighted Pono Market in Kapa‘a.

–Honorable Mention: Farrington High School on O‘ahu revealed how much members of Hawai‘i’s world championship little league team missed Hawai‘i food when they were on the road.

–Moanalua High School on O‘ahu told the story of a young man who is carrying on his late father’s legacy through his family’s Chamorro Grindz food truck.

–Wa‘ianae High School on O‘ahu showed how a stay-at-home mom brought together her entire family through her Padicakes mochi business.

First place winners will receive $500 worth of production equipment for their school’s media program. Second place winners will receive $300 worth of production equipment for their school’s media program. Third place winners will receive $200 worth of production equipment for their school’s media program. Honorable mention winners will receive $100 worth of production equipment for their school’s media program.

In honor of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, Tanglewood—the famed summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—dedicated its entire 2018 season to the iconic composer, conductor, performer, educator and humanitarian.

Gil Won-Ok reading her speech in China, supported by a Cao Hei Mao and her daughter activist Meehyang Yoon.

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army kidnapped approximately 200,000 young women and forced them into military sexual slavery as “comfort women.” The Apology follows three of these women – Adela Reyes Barroquillo in the Philippines, Cao Hei Mao in China and Gil Won-Ok in South Korea – in the ongoing movement pressing the Japanese government for a formal apology that has never come. Seventy years after their imprisonment, and after decades of living in silence and shame, these once invisible women (culturally referred to as “grandmothers”) give their first-hand accounts of the truth for the record in hopes that this horrific chapter of history will not be forgotten.

Follow three low-income teens in Brooklyn who take it upon themselves to make a difference by becoming peer college counselors in their schools. They are high school seniors who are fighting to defy the odds not only for themselves but for every single one of their classmates, becoming the very resource they don’t have themselves.

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army kidnapped approximately 200,000 young women and forced them into military sexual slavery as “comfort women.” The Apology follows three of these women – Adela Reyes Barroquillo in the Philippines, Cao Hei Mao in China and Gil Won-Ok in South Korea – in the ongoing movement pressing the Japanese government for a formal apology that has never come. Seventy years after their imprisonment, and after decades of living in silence and shame, these once invisible women (culturally referred to as “grandmothers”) give their first-hand accounts of the truth for the record in hopes that this horrific chapter of history will not be forgotten.

Filmmaker Tiffany Hsiung spoke with us by phone from Toronto, Canada about the film:

PBS Hawai‘i: Could you take us through the process of deciding to make this film and how it became, as you say, a film you “needed” to make?

I was appalled and shocked when I first heard about comfort women, mainly because I was already turning 25 and had never heard about them before. Bits and pieces of stories about WWII in Asia would be told by elders and family members, but they never talked about the sexual slavery that occurred.

I was invited by educators in North America to document teachers in Asia who were survivors. It was through that two week tour that I realized there was so much more to learn. I wanted to learn, not just about what happened to the grandmothers when they were comfort women, but about the aftermath. So many war stories focus on the act itself, when I think the six decades of surviving better illustrates the gravity and the impact of what they lived through. I knew we wanted to let the grandmothers take us on their journey. I knew I didn’t want it to be saturated with archival footage or scholars and historians talking about “the facts.”

I realized working on the project that my own silence and shame from my experience as a survivor of sexual violence was something I was still holding onto, and the grandmothers gave me the strength to come to terms with that. It was an organic process, and the film ended up being something I needed to make.

What kept you going, and what perspective can you give viewers to help them digest this emotional film?

It was difficult. I remember trying not to cry in front of the grandmothers, and when we filmed in locations they had been taken to, I had nightmares. There was only one time I felt like I couldn’t go on, and that was the passing of Grandma Adela. I was closest to her, and we had dreams of traveling with the film together. My greatest regret is that I wasn’t able to finish the film in time for her to see it, and the amount of love and support she got from audiences around the world. I know that would have made her so happy and proud.

What was important to me to bring across in the film was the human spirit of the grandmothers, the levity they brought to everything they were doing. There is so much life in them, and that is what got me through the hardest moments.

And where do you think their strength of spirit and levity comes from?

The human condition is both laughter and tears; we’re not just one emotion. After surviving what they had endured, the grandmothers just have so much love to give. They want to give to a new generation.

What are the newest developments for the Grandmothers’ and their movement?

Even though she says in the film that she wants to just eat and sleep from now on, Grandma Gil is still traveling to spread awareness for the cause. The grandmothers have also started the “Nabi” Fund (Korean word for “butterfly”), which they contribute to themselves to help women currently enduring sexual slavery or violence around the world.

The new Korean government is standing behind the grandmothers, aiming to create a new agreement with the Japanese government that listens to the grandmothers’ demands – mostly having to do with education. The “One-Million Signature” petition highlighted in the film is also still available to sign.

What would you like viewers to come away with after seeing the film?

I hope viewers will be inspired by the grandmothers, their resilience. I hope viewers can look into their own lives and see how they might be contributing to the cycle of silence and shame. It starts with our own families; you never know what a family member has been through. I hope they can open up a safe space for conversation about sexual violence.

Look back on three guests who trusted their instincts and possessed unwavering confidence in the choices they made. We revisit our conversations with the late Hawai‘i State Supreme Court Chief Justice William S. Richardson, Wai‘anae High School (O‘ahu) educator Candy Suiso and video game creator-turned-philanthropist Henk Rogers.

This program will be rebroadcast on Sunday, Oct. 14, at 4:00 pm and 11:30 pm.

It does, and I go swimming too. And I know I can walk to a certain spot, and this is public property. And my friends and I can use it.

Candy Suiso:

And for our kids, we want them to be the best at whatever they choose to be. And be honest, contributing citizens to our community. To come back, to give back, and just to do what’s right in life. Do what’s right, even when no one’s watching.

Henk Rogers:

The game business is bigger than the movie business. Sometimes, I see young people, and they go: I want to be a game designer, I want to get into the game business. To get into the game business today, you can’t just be good; you have to be brilliant.

How can you spot a truly creative mind, an innovator and problem-solver? Do they share similar personality traits? Are they smarter than the rest of us? More confident, more daring. Coming up on Long Story Short, three very different, all practitioners of original thinking.

One-on-one engaging conversations with some of Hawai‘i’s most intriguing people: Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox.

Aloha mai kākou. I’m Leslie Wilcox. Original thinkers reveal themselves as they assume a variety of roles within our community. What is that special motivation or skill that inspired a chief justice, a public schoolteacher, and a videogame creator turned philanthropist? All three trusted their instincts, their sense of priority and free-thinking.

First, we’ll turn to a 2009 conversation with a man known as CJ, a nickname given to the late Hawai‘i State Supreme Court Chief Justice William S. Richardson. He was a public school graduate who grew up in a working class Kaimukīfamily during the 1920s. He championed Hawai‘i’s Democratic Party during its rise to power in the 50s, and served as lieutenant governor during the John Burns administration. He was the State’s chief justice during some of the most formative years in Hawai‘i’s history, when a young island state searched for its sense of identity and fundamental values.

You were one of the people that was excited about statehood, that helped to make it happen, that recrafted government in the wake of statehood. And now, we’re coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of statehood, 2009. Many Hawaiians don’t see that as cause for celebration.

Well … to me, it’s great cause for celebration. We’re part of a great country. Like every other state in the union, they had to come up and live, and have their new laws jive with the old. Even if you go back to England, where the common law came over, and if you looked at the way the law went across the country right through the Louisiana Purchase where the French came in, and the country had to adjust to that. And now, we must still look at how it affects the Far East and all the other countries and states and islands throughout the Pacific Ocean.

Part of what is now, is based on the Great Māhele, King Kamehameha III. And it was a distribution of land. Do you think that was pono?

I think it’s pono. I think our leaders of the past were as good as any that ever existed, that our Hawaiian ways were just ways of living. And Hawai‘i should revive what we could of the good parts. And I would say almost all of it were good parts.

You could have used the English law as a precedent, but often, you would look back to see what ali‘i from the Monarchy days did.

Well, whenever I could, whatever the history books would come up with on old Hawai‘i and what few things that I had picked up over the years, I felt that I should try to apply those to the extent that we could.

For example, when the question came, who owns the new land being created by lava from the volcano, what was the answer of your court?

Well, that seemed easy enough for me, but I know the beaches were needed in Hawai‘i. Without our beaches, there was no Hawai‘i to speak of, the Hawai‘i that we loved.

Now, in many parts of the continent, the beaches are private property; right?

Yes. It seemed perfectly logical to me that people should be able to use the beaches, and that the property lines could not follow all of the methods of old England, say, and that I should try to bring those cases up in line to the way the Hawaiians did it.

And that wasn’t the only big one you did. There were the rights of citizens to challenge Land Court decisions, Native Hawaiian rights, and use of private property water.

Again, I wasn’t that much of an expert on Hawaiian law. But I had a good court. They were willing and able go and look at all of the problems, and see what was going on. And I traveled around the islands a lot. And you’re speaking now perhaps of water right, which was so important, because we were a plantation community. And you get to a case like when two plantations began to argue over how much water they could have. They both needed water. But when a third one began to take too much water, to the detriment of some of the others, then you had to decide whose water should it be. The Robinson case in the end was clear to me, but it seemed revolutionary, I suppose. But the people who really needed the water were those on the bottom of the streams, the taro patch and the rice patch owners. They’re the ones that needed the water. And so, it seemed simple to me to just say: Well, neither of you is entitled to all of that water; it’s the people down below, the taro patch owners and the rice patch owners.

It’s elegantly simple. I actually talked with the dean of the law school, which is named after you. Avi Soifer said imagine, you know, very complicated filings, going on for years, big battle, and you said: Well, let’s take a look at what’s happening at the end of the line.

Well, and we were a new state, not used to following and just being a follower. We needed to decide to decide for ourselves what was best for our people.

You took some heat over that.

I did.

But it became a symbol of enlightenment. People said, you know, here’s a far-thinking guy using the past to build on the future.

Well, of course, I’m glad to hear you say that. And I thought it was right. There was never any question in my own mind.

Chief Justice William Richardson, for whom the law school at the University of Hawai‘i is named, was an original thinker, in the right place at the right time, and his legacy is embedded in the constitutional laws of our state.

Sometimes, the journey that brings the right original thinker to the right place and time is really not much of a journey at all, but no less impactful. In our 2009 conversation with Candy Suiso, she said that when she graduated from Wai‘anae High School, she thought she wanted to get away from the Leeward Coast community, and never come back. Thankfully, this second-generation teacher and Milken Award winning educator had a change of heart. Although she would insist on sharing the credit, today, Suiso’s legacy is the national Emmy Award winning Searider Productions at Wai‘anae High School. It is not only the largest, most successful digital media center any school in the state, it’s the driving force behind a movement to improve a challenged community from within.

I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to give back to a community that was very good to me. I really felt that that’s where I was the most needed. It felt right. I wanted to be home. I wanted to be in a community that raised me. And it was the right thing to do; I just felt that that was the right thing to do. And it was the right decision, when I look back.

Much of what you’ve done at Wai‘anae High School wasn’t done, really, within the system. You had to find ways to equip yourself and your students with grants. You had to become a grant writer to get the proper equipment, the space.

M-hm. Within the DOE, there’s so many limitations, and there’s only so much money to go around. And part of our success is, I believe we’ve learned to work around the system, and been very successful in, like you said, going after a lot of grants. A lot of support, pulling together partners, pulling together people that believe in you; that’s been our success. We had to prove our self. You know, like you said, the right people at the right time started to notice these students, and started to give. Because they were doing things with nothing. When we first started, we started in a classroom with no air conditioning, with very little equipment.

And by the way, heat isn’t just bad for people.

It’s so bad.

It’s bad for equipment.

We would pack fifty kids, forty kids in a classroom, and it was hot, and no air conditioning. But you know, those kids never grumbled. They never grumbled because they didn’t have an air-conditioned room or top of the line equipment, like a lot of other schools did. Instead, they just started to create projects, and they did some pretty good projects, and people started to notice. That’s what happens; people started to notice.

How did they know they could do that? What got them started?

You give them the tools. As educators, you know, the team of educators, there was enough people out there that said: You can do it; of course, you can do it. Make a video; here, here’s the tool, here’s the camera. Here’s your tool; here’s how you do it.

The essence of video production, as I look at it, is storytelling. What kind of experience do you think your students had in storytelling?

They are born with the gift to tell a story. I really believe their success is because they are born with the gift to create. The kids out in Wai‘anae, I really believe, are the most creative, loving storytellers. Because they grow up; they don’t grow up with a lot. I really believe that they don’t grow up with a lot, so they entertain themselves by playing the ‘ukulele, sitting around talking story, they draw, they doodle, they sing. And it carries over. When they come to us, they’re so strong, their heartfelt creativity carries over with this tool. All of a sudden, we have these expensive toys now that we give them, and we say: Go create. And they’re great.

And they just take to it.

And it’s amazing; it’s incredible.

You didn’t have the star pupils of Wai‘anae High School. Some of your kids were doing really poorly in other classes, they were reporting to school from their homes on the beach in tents.

M-hm. We have the homeless, we have kids whose parents have been in jail, they are abused, they come to us. You know, a lot of dysfunction; so much. And you know, that’s my world; I grew up there, and I know that world. And they come to us, and we give them hope. For a lot of these kids, it’s their security. We’re their family. We teach them a tool, and they become successful at it. And they see something that they create, and for their self-esteem, it’s: Wow, I did that. You know, it gives them hope. And they realize: I have just learned something that I can do for life. And a lot of these kids’ lives have been turned around. They would have dropped out, I really believe. And they’ll tell us that too: If it wasn’t for this class, I would have dropped out, or I didn’t know I was gonna go to college, or I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And now, so many of our kids are college graduates.

They’re being recruited by television stations.

They’re being recruited.

And advertising agencies.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

I remember when your Seariders first started doing public service announcements for various clients, you invited the business community to hire the kids and said, “We’ll see what we can come up with for you.” And I just remember as a professional television person at that time, how the students’ work had so much more depth than what you would normally see in a PSA, a public service announcement, because the kids knew that world, as you mentioned. When it was about crystal meth, they brought a reality to it that nobody had brought before.

These kids know what it’s like to living in houses and homes where there’s crystal meth, where they have to be in a car where someone’s been drinking.

They know how it hurts.

They know how it hurt. And it was their stories. If you look at any of those PSAs, those are their stories. That was either them, or that was someone they knew, and they were able to come up with the ideas from the heart, from real life. And I think that’s what makes their work so powerful. It’s real stories. They tell their stories. Whether it’s a news story, a public service announcement, a commercial, they’re just telling their story.

Tell me about if can, can.

If can, can; if no can, no can. Because you know, there’s nothing worse, we feel, than saying you’re gonna do something, and not do it, and not follow through. And we tell these kids: If you’re gonna do something, if you’re gonna say you’re gonna do something, hold yourself to it and do it, follow through and do it. Because really, there’s nothing worse than not completing something that you’ve committed to. And if we could teach them now in school, it will carry over in life, in a job, in a marriage, in a relationship.

And when you work in teams, you know other people are counting on you.

Yes; ‘cause it’s teamwork. And the good thing about our program is, every project that these kids do is a team effort. And we always think, when you leave our program, if you have learned nothing about video production, about creating a web page, about page layout, a newspaper, we hope you’ve really learned the importance of teamwork, cooperation—

And getting things done on time.

Meeting deadlines, respect, respect for self, respect for other people, respect for property. So, if you’re gonna say you’re gonna do something, you better do it, because if you don’t, you’re dropping the ball for your teammates. But just don’t say you’re gonna do something if you can’t do it, ‘cause you let everybody down. So, if can, can; if no can, no can. And it’s been our mantra. And the kids, they get it; the kids get it.

Where do you think this movement will take the Wai‘anae Coast?

I hope eventually it will take them out of poverty. It might take decades, but this is certainly a start. You have a group of young adults that are really making a difference, because they have come back to the Wai‘anae Coast, and they are giving back, and they believe in themselves, and they’re believing in the students that are under them. And they are trying very hard to prove to the rest of the world that we’re just as good as everybody else, if you just give us a chance.

Perhaps educator Candy Suiso would have provided inspiration for our next original thinker, who nearly dropped out of high school. In 2016, visionary entrepreneur Henk Rogers told us that he took the one and only elective course offered at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. When he learned everything there was to know about that elective in computer science, he saw no reason to remain in school. But he did graduate from high school, and Henk Rogers has made a fortune in the video gaming industry, most notably for bringing Tetris, one of the world’s top-selling videogames, from Russia to the rest of the world. More recently, this Hawai‘i resident and visionary entrepreneur has turned his talents to no less than saving the planet. He made that leap when suddenly confronted with just how fragile his own life could be.

I found myself in the back of an ambulance with a hundred percent blockage of the widow-maker. That is the artery, the biggest artery in your heart, and it will kill you if it’s blocked. And so, I was lucky, ‘cause I kind of felt it coming, and they called an ambulance for me, and so, I was already on the way to Straub. And then, I realized, because they were gonna take me in for observation; they said: There’s nothing really wrong with you, we’ll just take you in for observation, we won’t even turn on the siren. The siren went on, the guy who was taking care of me was in the cockpit talking to the hospital and saying—I didn’t hear, but I knew he was saying: This guy is not even gonna make it, get an operation room ready, an operating room ready, blah-blah-blah. And I’m back there saying: You gotta be kidding me; I haven’t spent any of the money yet. You know. I was going: Oh, is this some kind of a joke? I worked so hard all my life, and finally sell my company, get a bunch of money, and I’m on the say out? And then, the second thing I said: No, I’m not going, I still have stuff to do. And it’s kind of like, I thought, you know, what are the things that I’ve always talked to myself that I was gonna get done in life, and that I hadn’t even started? And that just made me say: No, I’m gonna do this. And so, I was in the hospital recovering, and the next couple weeks I didn’t go back to work. I had my chance to think about my bucket list. And I said: These are missions in life. And the first mission came to me in the back of the newspaper. It was like, in the back of the newspaper, it had a story about coral. Oh, by the way, we’re gonna kill all the coral in the world by the end of the century. And you know, I moved to Hawai‘i, and I fell in love with the ocean. I used to dive, surf on the North Shore, and I couldn’t believe that we would do something so callous as to kill all the coral in the world. Islands are made out of coral. And you know, you look a little bit further, and it’s like a third of the life in the ocean is dependent on the coral existing. So, I said: No, no, we’re not allowed to do that. What’s causing that? It’s ocean acidification. What’s causing that? Carbon dioxide going into the ocean is causing that. So then, my first mission is to end the use of carbon-based fuel. And so, I started the foundation, and recently, we had a big success in Hawai‘i, that Hawai‘i has made the mandate that they were gonna be a hundred percent renewable by 2045, for electricity. And that is a huge step in the right direction.

And your Blue Planet Foundation had a role in that.

Oh, I would say we’re the ones who created that legislation and fought for it. And, you know, ‘cause when you create a piece of legislation, then you have to work with all the politicians, and you gotta get enough politicians to get behind it, to get it passed. So, it’s not good enough to just come up with the words, ‘cause it’s—it’s all the pushing that goes on. I guess it’s called lobbying.

Yes, it is.

And you’re already off the grid at your home in Honolulu, and on the ranch.

Yes. So, we were studying storage, and we finally decided that we were gonna just get off the grid on the Big Island. And so, we tested the different storage technologies, and now we ended up with a battery technology that basically runs by itself.

What are some of the things that prepared you to have the career you did, which was something you made up yourself? You didn’t follow a template for it. What were some of the formative things along the way?

I think one of the things is that I always had a deep-rooted feeling that whatever it is that I wanted to do, I could do it.

Where did that come from?

I think it came from New York. It’s kind of an attitude that we had in high school. We stopped the war in Vietnam. Okay; we didn’t specifically, but we were part of it. And that kind of energy, the feeling that youth can change the world, and that is a very important feeling. And I need the young people in Hawai‘i to have that feeling. They need to take ownership of their future, and make Hawai‘i the example of sustainability.

This videogame creator, environmentalist, the public schoolteacher, and the chief justice; three original thinkers. What they seem to share is an unwavering persistence to push, to get it right, and have confidence in the choices they make. We’re honored to revisit our conversation with the late Chief Justice William Richardson, and we thank Candy Suiso and Henk Rogers for their inspiring stories. I’m Leslie Wilcox for Long Story Short. Mahalo to you for joining us. Aloha nui.

For audio and written transcripts of all episodes of Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox, visit PBSHawaii.org. To download free podcasts of Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox, go to the Apple iTunes Store or visit PBSHawaii.org.

Were you ambitious?

Not that I know of.

But you went ahead, and went through four years at UH.

I went four years at UH, and enjoyed it all the way through.

Met a lot of people who would later be your allies in politics.

Yes, yes.

And good friends.

Good friends; they helped me in everything I’ve done.

You went to UH, and you had more than most people of your time had, a college degree, but that wasn’t gonna be the end of your higher education.

Well, I thought it was, but I had a job with the oil company, and I thought: Well, this would be great, I like this kind of work; I think I’ll do this the rest of my life. And then, one of the professors up at school went to see my father, and he said: Now, this boy better go on to law school. And well, how can you do that Dad; you can’t afford it. Well, he said: You know, if you’re really gonna go, I’ll rent your room out, and you go on to college. Which he did. In those days, it was five days by steamship, and another four days by train to get to the East Coast.

Your mom was a legendary teacher on the Wai‘anae Coast; right?

Oh, thirty-one years of her life, she dedicated her life to teaching out there. And really, that was her life. She impacted a community, and thirty years, just taught at Mākaha Elementary School. She went there, and she never left. I know the principal would always throw all of these hardcore kids and say: Okay, Mrs. Smith, you’re the one that’s gonna take these kids. And she would turn them around. She was mean, but she was very strict, and she was very fair, and she loved them all. And she did; she turned a lot lives around.

When I started my company, I used my Hawai‘i experience of ARRG, which is playing Dungeons & Dragons. And personal computers happened, and I thought: This is my chance. So, I made the first roleplaying game in Japan. But I didn’t speak, read, or write Japanese, and I hacked that computer and got my wife to try to read something in the manual, but she knows nothing about computers. And so, that was also like hocus-pocus that was coming out of them. Anyway, I hacked my way through the game, made it. So, there were no roleplaying games before The Black Onyx, and it became the number-one game in 1984, and it was the number-two game in 1985. So, it had a two-year reign. And now, something like thirty percent of all games in Japan are roleplaying games. So, you know, people that are in the industry that meet me and find out that I wrote Black Onyx, they say: Oh, my god, you’re the reason I’m in this industry, you know.

Rev. Mitsuo “Mits” Aoki, a pioneer of Hawai‘i’s hospice movement and founder of the University of Hawaii School of Religion, passed away in August 2010. This film from 2003 highlights his own transformative near-death experience; his therapeutic work with terminally-ill cancer patients; the death of his wife Evelyn; and thoughts about his own mortality. For over 40 years, Rev. Aoki attempted to take the terror out of dying, and showed others how to experience death as not just the end of life, but as a vital part of life, as well.

Students from Kamehameha Schools Maui Middle School in Pukalani profile Paula Keele, a wellness educator who teaches a class called enhanced fitness to senior citizens at Kahului Union Church. Ms. Keele started the program because her mother had become debilitated by foregoing the proper physical therapy after she broke her shoulder. “I really want to make sure that seniors stay healthy for as long as possible,” says Keele. Her students, however, seem to be teaching Keele as much as she is teaching them. “My students have taught me patience,” she says. “They’ve taught me kindness. They’ve set really great examples, almost like mentors, on how I can be better as I get older.”

ALSO FEATURED

–Students from Seabury Hall Middle School in Upcountry Maui explore the plight of one of the longest surviving species on earth—the sea turtle.

–Students from Roosevelt High School in the Makiki district of O‘ahu profile a Japanese immigrant student at Roosevelt who had a hard time fitting in until other students began to respect him for who he is.

–Students from Waiākea High School in the Hilo district of Hawai‘i Island introduce us to a dancer who uses dancing to alleviate the extreme pain she suffers from a rare physical disorder.

–Students from Dole Middle School in the Kalihi district of O‘ahu teach us the tinikling, a traditional Filipino dance that has participants jumping in and out between two moving bamboo poles.

–Students from Wheeler Middle School on O‘ahu tell the story of a young woman who climbs Mt. Kilimanjaro as a means of healing.

–Students from Maui High School in Kahului tell the story of a deaf cheerleader who refuses to be called disabled and feels she can achieve anything that a hearing person can.

This episode of HIKI NŌ is hosted by students at Wallace Rider Farrington High School in the Kalihi district of O‘ahu.

For 24 years, Marilyn Cristofori headed the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance, a statewide nonprofit that champions the arts through advocacy and education. Upon Cristofori’s retirement, the very nonprofit she headed selected her as its 2017 Alfred Preis Honoree for her lifetime support and leadership in the arts. In this conversation, she recounts her experiences as a dancer, a university educator and a nonprofit leader.

This program will be rebroadcast on Sunday, July 8, at 4:00 pm and 11:30 pm.

And it still is. Because what we do at the Arts Alliance is … the big picture. But if you want to be a ballet dancer, you’ve got to get your body to a ballet studio and stand at the ballet barre, and learn … that particular discipline. If you want to be an opera singer, you’re not gonna do it … in a school classroom.

M-hm.

I mean, you can be exposed to it, you can learn about it, you can … the history and the composers, and so on, and so forth. But if you want to be a performer or a creator of that discipline … gotta go there. There is no other choice.

Marilyn Cristofori headed the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance for twenty-four years. Upon her retirement, she was selected as the 2017 Alfred Preis Honoree. That was a prestigious acknowledgement of her lifetime support and leadership in the arts. She joins fellow Preis Honorees next, on Long Story Short.

One-on-one engaging conversations with some of Hawai‘i’s most intriguing

people: Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox.

Aloha mai kākou. I’m Leslie Wilcox. Marilyn Cristofori always knew she’d have at least two careers, because she started out as a dancer, a calling prone to injuries and other physical wear and tear. Next, Cristofori became a university dance teacher. And then, she enjoyed a long third career heading a nonprofit organization advocating for arts. Upon retirement, she was named 2017’s Preis Honoree for her arts achievements by the very organization she headed, Hawai‘i Arts Alliance. She joined a long line of distinguished honorees, many of whom she helped to select. We’ll revisit some of these arts champions during the half hour, and get to know Marilyn Cristofori. As a child, she spent summers and many other times away from her family home in Sacramento because her mother was often ill. Young Marilyn would stay with her grandmother in the Bay Area.

I loved my grandmother. It made me identify with the things that were part of that life. And I loved it. San Francisco.

Italian?

Italian. She loved the opera, I loved the opera. I can’t sing, but she loved the opera; she always played opera in the house.

And you were the only child in the house?

The only; yeah. She had three children, my mother being one of them, but they were all grown up. I was the only young child. My grandmother did not intend to raise another child; that was one of those … it happened.

And you felt at home at school, and at your grandmother’s house?

I felt very at home at my grandmother’s house, and I adjusted to my other home.

Was your grandmother your most formative influence, then, as a child?

I consider her that; m-hm. Yeah.

Did she give you any explicit advice about the future?

Oh, god. She was … a woman of her era. And I think the year she got married, the women’s vote was finally put in, and she was determined I was gonna get an education.

Did she know how she would pay for it, or anyone would pay for it?

Oh, no. I just had to get good grades and earn a scholarship.

So, you knew that from an early age?

M-hm.

That you were gonna go to college through a scholarship, and you were gonna make the grade to do it.

Yeah.

Did you know what you wanted to do?

When I was raised, Leslie, there was the idea that as a woman, you did nursing or teaching, or mothering, or sometimes a secretary, and occasionally you might have another profession. But those were the main ones. So, I thought I was gonna be a teacher.

M-hm. And you did get a BA in education.

I did.

From a very good college.

I did.

You got into Stanford.

Yeah.

On scholarship?

Yeah.

Wow.

At that point in time, it was kind of fun, because women were still new to Stanford, so the ratio was about four to one. So, it was a great experience.

Lots of men. And did—

And I was young, so …

Did you feel younger than eighteen?

I was twenty when I graduated.

Oh; how did you get into college so early?

Well, when I was much younger, and all that shuffling back and forth to my grandmother’s and so on, they skipped me a full grade in school.

Wow. So, you graduated from Stanford University at age twenty.

Yeah.

As a … teacher.

Teacher. Yeah. And then, we had an opportunity to take a trip to Europe. And … I thought, that would be fun.

We, meaning you and …

And some … Stanford colleagues.

M-hm.

And a professor was doing the trip, and it was like a big deal. We had to go to New York and change planes, and fly over Iceland, and go to London. That was my first time out of California.

And you actually—

I didn’t come back for five and a half years.

Is that right?

I discovered dancing, which I had been doing all my life, but I didn’t know that I really wanted to do it.

What kind of dancing were you doing?

I was doing ballet at that time. So, then, I wanted to be a dancer, but I had gotten a full scholarship to what was then Radcliff at Harvard Business School. Why did I apply to Harvard Business School? Because the guy that I had a crush on applied to Harvard Business School. I thought it would be fun to go. And I went to Europe, and I decided I really didn’t want to go, and I knew that I could always go to business school, but I couldn’t always dance. So, I stayed in Europe.

And where did you dance?

I danced in Rome, and I danced in London, mainly. Those were the two.

And what was it about your experience in Europe that caused—you left the boyfriend behind too; right?

Yeah. But another one came along.

And is that part of the reason for staying in Europe, or was it—

Yeah.

–sheer dance, or a combination?

Well, part of it. Because he decided to go to London School of Economics, so we got married. I was working in a contemporary company. And I went to ballet classes, and I went to the Royal Ballet. I was not working as a professional ballet dancer in London. I experienced a lot of it, and that was what I knew. So, when I came back to San Francisco, I then was with San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera Ballet, Pacific Ballet, and Lathrop Contemporary Company. So then, I worked as a professional dancer. And because I was still young enough, since I had graduated so young, I was able to do it, and have … a fairly decent career.

What other types of dancing did you do?

Then, I did contemporary.

Which was freeform …

Well, modern dance. And that’s why I got involved until I … I needed to get a job, and became a professor and academic, and you’re supposed to write a book. And what did I do instead? I didn’t want to write a book; I made … documentaries for PBS about famous dancers. And so, I got very involved with that part of things.

And you felt passionate about a number of things, it sounds like.

Yeah; yeah. Well, I loved dancing. That’s definitely my first love. But every dancer needs at least two careers.

And you know that, going in.

Well, because you can’t dance beyond a certain age … adequately. I got to be a professor, I got to teach. And then, I went to business … eventually.

Because that’s what you were going to do years before. You know, it’s not a natural jump, it doesn’t sound like, to go from dancing to professor of dance, to an MBA at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

At least in my day, it was more natural to go from a professional dance career, or to parallel with teaching, and to move into academia.

You were a professor, and then, you left California and came here. Why?

Because I married … Gregg Lizenbery, my husband, and he got offered the position to be director of dance at UH Mānoa. So, I had taken an early retirement, and then it just so happened he got offered that position. And then, we moved here. That was almost three decades ago. I did not look for my career with the Arts Alliance. But after we moved here, we realized that the cost of living was a little bit different than we were used to.

M-hm.

And so, I had thought: Oh, I’m retired, I’ll just … but that didn’t work. So, I needed to find a position. That’s what I did. So, for a while, I worked part-time for the Arts Alliance, and part-time for Early Childhood, and made them partners. And then, when I was into the position at Arts Alliance, I realized that I would hit a ceiling if I didn’t get a new skillset. Which is why I went to business school.

After receiving her executive master of business degree from the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawai‘i, Marilyn Cristofori felt she had all the tools necessary to grow the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance.

How do you get funding for the arts?

Oh … so many ways. One of the biggest, biggest … important things that people don’t always get. I find when I say to somebody “arts”, the shade comes down, and what they see is a painting on a wall in a museum.

M-hm.

Or they remember, because there used to be arts in the school curriculum, when they were in school as a child; they had a music class and they had a drawing class, and they had maybe sometimes a dance class, and they could be in their … high school production, theater production. And they remember those things, and they don’t know that it’s not there anymore.

Mm.

So, you have to tell them … No, it’s not been there for quite a while.

Do public schools have virtually no arts classes? Is that what you’re saying?

Not exactly. It’s heading upwards, but mostly, one of the things the Arts Alliance does now, partners with the State arts agency to run what we call Artists in the Schools.

M-hm.

And that’s … funded by public monies for public schools.

But how do you argue the case when lawmakers or charitable organizations are saying: Look, I mean, we need to support the basics; reading, writing, and arithmetic, and computer technology. We can’t do art; that’s something you’ve gotta get on your own.

One of the biggest convincing arguments has to do with brain research. And they’ve done a lot of research to find out—one of my favorite studies was done, a longevity study. And they followed kids in high school who were either in like boy scouts or girl scouts, or some other community service organization, and where there school arts event in some way, whether it was after school or in school, or if they were in sports. And then, they followed them for … ten years, and how did they do ten years later, by which time they were usually married with some kids, and in a career of some kind. The ones that were happiest, most successful, had come from the arts. So, then they looked further back into that, and they examined what happens when you have those … experiences as a child.

M-hm.

That it shapes your brain differently. You have those connections, neuropathways. And if they aren’t formed by a certain age, usually puberty, they kind of wither and die on the vine.

It’s a key to happiness.

A key to happiness and success in life. So, that’s why back in ancient days now … arts were considered to part of the curriculum. So, the big deal is to get it during the formative years. So, right now, the way our Hawaii school system is built, by the time … children go into high school … there are art teachers, and music teachers, and band, and there are options, after school performing arts centers, all of which work very, very well. But a lot of the times, the kids that want to do those things didn’t have them when they were young, and so, they don’t have competitive skills to be involved. We teach about the arts and how the arts can enrich an experience and change your life.

How big is the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance? How many staffers?

Well, we’re all the way up to seven.

Seven staffers; and what’s your budget?

I took over in ’94.

’94; okay.

Yeah. So … it was thirty thousand. And I said: That won’t do. And then, we got up to … it’s varied, depending on what comes … from national, mostly. Not two million; just under two million. But that was a good jump. It needs to now double again. I feel really good about … we have a base that’s established in the education part. And there’s something to work with, and expand, and go to, and staying with education is essential.

You mentioned three careers, and it’s a very long work record. I don’t know what seventy-seven looks like, but to me, you don’t look like you’re seventy-seven years old.

I really am. And a half.

Do you feel it?

Starting to happen.

Marilyn Cristofori was the thirty-seventh recipient of the Alfred Preis Honors for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. In the past, we’ve featured other Preis Honorees on Long Story Short. We look back now at three recent recipients, and their contributions.

Sarah Richards was the 2015 Preis Honoree. As president of the Hawai‘i Theatre Center for a quarter of a century, she spearheaded an historic restoration, transforming the once dilapidated theater into a national award-winning performance center. A former college dean of students, Sarah Richards switched careers and actually succeeded the legendary architect Alfred Preis himself as chief of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

You succeeded a man who has got a lot of aura around him in history.

Yes.

Alfred Preis.

Right.

As head of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

Right.

In 1980?

1980; m-hm.

What was he like? Did you know him before you took over?

I got to know him. He was a wonderful man. He was a Prussian architect. And so, he was very Prussian in character, in modus operandi. And he was the one who really initiated the Art in Public Places program, really, on a European model. He was a lovely man, with a great vision.

And when it was time for him to step down, the foundation looked for somebody who was a good administrator, and who could handle the strong voices in the arts community.

Yes.

And they selected you to do that.

They did; they did.

What kind of strong voices?

Oh, well, the arts, as you know, because the State Foundation dealt with all the arts, whether it was visual arts, performing arts, literary arts. And so, there was a lot of variety of art groups we were dealing with. And of course, since we were the granting agency, we had a lot of very personal contacts with how much money grants were gonna be given to what groups.

Right; and projects are like babies.

Oh, yes; oh, yes.

You give money to one, and it’s my baby.

That’s right.

You know, it seems like a dream job to have all this money that you can give to wonderful art projects. But you probably are under criticism, no matter what you do.

Oh, yes. Giving away money is not just a piece of cake. You need to be clear on what your mission is, what you want to accomplish, and then also who makes decisions and who are qualified to make decisions. It wasn’t just sort of, Here’s some money. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in the eye of the creator. But there are certain standards that the art community has, and that’s why you ask a group of knowledgeable people to review and make a judgment. We were proud we were number one in the nation in per capita state support. So, we did a fair amount of lobbying the State Legislature, and also getting money from the federal government.

You’re a very determined person, aren’t you?

I am determined.

You’re very goal-oriented.

I was very goal-oriented; yes, I was. Yes.

And you’re a missioned person.

Yeah.

Here’s 2016 Preis Honoree, Michael Titterton, former president and general manager of Hawai‘i Public Radio. Under his leadership, HPR expanded its broadcast reach across the State.

You got your master’s degree in public speaking and rhetoric.

Rhetoric; yes.

Why did you choose that?

Bear in mind, this is the very, very early 70s. It’s 1971, actually. And … coming into ’72, and I knew the U.S. was … I mean, this was … social mobility was here, and that’s what I was really after. I didn’t know it at that time, ‘cause I didn’t know the words. But social mobility. And meritocracy. You know, if you work hard, you can get places. And that’s really what everybody dreams about, when they dream about America, when they’re not from here. If I was going to understand this place, the quickest way to do it might be to study the media, because that seemed to be the bottleneck through which everything passed. And it was a very busy bottleneck at that point. Watergate, for example, Vietnam War, all the unrest on college campuses. Glorious time. And all of it was being fed through a media, which was under suspicion, as much of it is now. And so, I specialized in that.

And you’d already had experienced storytelling, because you had stories to tell along the way.

Well, everybody does. Yeah. Just because of the basic courses that I had to then take as part of being in the rhetoric program, I began to learn something about the mechanics of storytelling, if you like, the idea of a narrative arc. And I was very quickly drafted into teaching public speaking. So yeah, that was … I hadn’t really thought about it, actually, as being part of the whole storytelling business, but I seem to keep coming back to that. But that’s what it is, that’s what life is; it’s the stories we get to tell.

And sometimes, you do things without having a name for it; right? And then, you find out—

Oh, yes; most of the time, actually.

Your real self keeps popping up in the form of what you do.

Yes; that is true. That is true. But storytelling … I guess that’s a lot of the attraction that I have, or that radio has for me, because it’s a storytelling medium, and storytelling is … there’s very few human behaviors that that go back further than storytelling. It’s the quintessential social act. It’s a wonderful vehicle for healing, for illumination, for understanding, for being civilized.

And radio has that intimate quality.

Mm. It’s a one-to-one medium, and it’s frighteningly intimate. And the best radio is indistinguishable from pillow talk. It’s that intimate. And that’s what I love about it. I mean, what’s not to love?

Henry Akina, who retired from the Hawaii Opera Theater, was the 2014 Preis Honoree. Born and raised in Honolulu, Henry Akina spent much of his adult life directing opera in prestigious opera houses around the world. He even founded an opera company in Berlin, before moving back home to Hawai‘i. Under the guidance of its first ever Hawai‘i-born artistic director, the Hawaii Opera Theater became known for vibrant, creative productions, sometimes incorporating modern updates and collaborations with top international artists.

I love that approach, in a sense modernizing with Harajuku costumes.

You’re referring to The Mikado, then.

Yeah, Mikado.

Right; yeah.

And you feel free to do that. You don’t take the same opera and present it again. You add new touches. You’ve had Anne Namba’s designs, you’ve had Dean Shibuya change things up.

We have a resident designer at HOT, Peter Dean Beck, who’s resident in New York, but who’s nonetheless been seminal for design here.

How do audiences feel about those changes?

I’m not sure. You know, people say nice things to me, so I’m assuming that they’re honest about those things. But I think that the audiences in Hawaii respond well to good stories, and we try and make good stories wherever we are, from wherever we are.

Do you look for ways to take a classic story and localize it or modernize it?

Well, modernize it, perhaps. Localize it, not so much. But modernize it, perhaps. And in the case of Mikado, for instance, we knew that we couldn’t go backwards; we had to go forwards. And we had to look at the Japan of today, which was a lot different than the first time we did Mikado, which was ten years ago.

So, in ten years, it changed.

In ten years, life has changed. Yeah.

Did audiences know Harajuku girls? Because that was the play.

I think that we tried to let the audience know that we were doing the style. But you’ll have to ask Anne about the Harajuku things, because it was based on one of Anne’s trips to Japan. But I think that in contemporary life, we would be someplace else in ten years.

Right. I think she reimagined those characters as hip shoppers out for retail therapy.

She did; she did. And using cell phones every five minutes. Right. And using an iPad; things like that. So, whatever we’re using in ten years will be reflected in the staging.

You’ve already been announced, I believe, as the 2014 Preis Honoree in Arts, which is a tremendous honor, probably the largest honor we have in Hawai‘i in arts.

Well, I knew Alfred Preis, and I think that that’s … I was saying that, you know, people who know me well don’t expect this honor. And I didn’t expect it, either.

Why? Why didn’t you expect it? I wasn’t surprised to hear that you were named.

Well, I was, in a weird way. And I went to a board member, Jean Rolles, who had been honored herself. And she said: You will do it for this organization. And since then, I have decided that I will do it for the organization.

Congratulations to 2017 Preis Honoree Marilyn Cristofori of Hawai‘i Kai. And mahalo to all of the recipients of this award over the years for the work you’ve done to advance the arts and keep them vibrant in Hawai‘i. For PBS Hawai‘i and Long Story Short, I’m Leslie Wilcox. Aloha nui.

The key thing, whatever you’re doing … is to support creativity in our society as a whole. Keep your passion about creativity, and moving forward with what is right … what is just, and what helps everybody. ‘Cause if we don’t preserve our creativity … the rest of it doesn’t matter.

For audio and written transcripts of all episodes of Long Story Short with Leslie

Wilcox, visit PBSHawaii.org. To download free podcasts of Long Story Short with

Leslie Wilcox, go to the Apple iTunes Store or visit PBSHawaii.org.

I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to contribute so far to education. We’ve been able to create and move forward significantly with Arts First and get admirable, high quality arts back in the schools, particularly elementary schools. So, I’m really feeling good about that.

Originally recorded in 2008, this program commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine. In 1957, nine African American students walked through the doors of the all-white Little Rock Central High in Arkansas and stood against an angry mob in a defining moment for the nation’s civil rights movement. Minnijean Brown Trickey was one of those students, now known as the Little Rock Nine. Trickey, a teacher, writer and lecturer whose life work has been to build understanding and promote freedom and equality, shares details of her story that she doesn’t often tell.

This program will be rebroadcast on Wednesday, Nov. 29, at 11:00 pm and Sunday, Dec. 3, at 4:00 pm.

Aloha no! I’m Leslie Wilcox of PBS Hawaiʻi. Welcome to another Long Story Short. Last week, Minnijean Brown Trickey shared stories from her days as one of The Little Rock Nine – the teenagers who, in 1957, entered the previously all- White Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas watched by armed soldiers, an angry mob and a worldwide audience. Today, in Part Two of our two-part conversation, Minnijean speaks more.

I’d like to start by telling you what happened at the end of my conversation with Minnijean Brown Trickey. When the cameras shut down, our technical crew comprised mostly of college students learning high-definition television production applauded. Then they shook her hand and hugged her. Now, our studio is quite chilly. But at that moment, you could feel the warmth, the aloha. You could see it the students’ faces. And I could see it in Minnijean’s smile. She’s sharing living history, speaking with an unmistakably authentic voice.

I know you’ve had occasion to talk with folks who live in Hawaiʻi, even though you don’t live here. What are your thoughts about the racial situation here? You know, people like to say we’re a melting pot, but that’s a little optimistic.

Yeah. And I worry about sort of platitudes about a given society. The people here know whether they’re a melting pot or not. It has great possibility. And I worry about melting. I worry about having to melt. I think we should be able to work together with our cultural beliefs and world views and ideas. I think we can still work together. We don’t have to give up everything to be able to work together.

And do we want a melting pot? I have a friend who says, We should be a big, chunky stew.

Absolutely. And that’s what’s beautiful, and that’s what enriches us, and that’s what gives us other information and possibility. And it’s that precise mixture that enriches us all, in my opinion.

Minnijean Brown was one of the African-American teenagers to become known as The Little Rock Nine. In 1957, these students enrolled in Little Rock Central High, the largest school in Arkansas’ state capital. The Governor unlawfully and physically kept them from reporting to class by stationing hundreds of National Guard personnel around the school’s perimeter. The President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, sent in troops from the U.S. Army to escort the nine students to school. It was a tumultuous time for our nation and for 16 year-old Minnijean.

When I’ve seen clips of all of those confrontations at the school over so long a time, over months, of course, I really felt for the nine children, one of whom was you. But as a parent, I found myself thinking of your parents. I mean, it must have been so hard to let you go, and not know whether you were gonna be truly safe.

And we weren’t safe. But the bravery—we are given credit for bravery, but the parents were the brave ones because they followed our lead; because they knew that it was important, not just for us, but for the world. After the first day, seeing all the chaos and violence, we all knew this has to be, it must be. There’s no way of explaining that. But we were together on that. But they always said, You don’t have to go. You don’t have to go today, you don’t have to go tomorrow. Are you sure you want to go?

Were you always so sure you wanted to go?

Well, I kind of framed it in a way; But Ma, I gotta go, because I gotta see what they’re gonna think up to do to me tomorrow. You know, and so I guess we used different ways of dealing with difficult situations.

And none of your schoolmates – none of them dropped out either?

We couldn’t; it was just way too important. I admire those children; I just am fascinated by them, what they did, how they did it. And I’m trying to recover some of the ways that made it possible to keep going. But it ends up being sort of, They don’t want me here, I’m coming anyway. And maybe that’s how we have to look at things. And sometimes I don’t want to describe us as brave, ‘cause I’m not sure if we were. We were scared every minute. ‘Cause we got death threats at home. At night, my windows were broken in my bedroom. My father lost his job; other parents lost their jobs. So the terror never really stopped. It just became a test of wills. And now that I’m older, I know, my goodness, we were in such danger. And it makes me shake; now. At the time, my defiance was so powerful that it kept me going. Resistance, I call it. And that’s something we all have.

Did your family consider stepping back when your father lost his job?

Well, it’s too late, because you’ve already done the deed, you’ve already had the audacity to try to go to Central High School, the bastion of White education. You’ve already blown your thing. Everybody’s angry, people are furious, people are paying you back for having that much uppitiness, I guess, is the way it’s been framed over, you know, three hundred years, that if you dare to think yourself a full person.

I know there were angry White mobs; I know there were jeers and insults, and worse by your fellow students, White students. Did you get any pushback from other Blacks?

I think initially, I think people weren’t sure. Because I think we have to think there’d been small inroads of integration in small towns and in the South, just few and far between. But I think there was a great hope. I mean, there were two school systems; one superior, one inferior. I think any group of people hopes for that change. I mean, we got old books that were so old that so many pages were missing, and they were from forever ago, and they were dog-eared. And I think young Black kids and families saw the possibility that we would, you know have an equal education, that we would have the same opportunity for education that White kids had. So I mean, when they built a new school, but they didn’t equip the science lab. And they built a new school, and it didn’t have this facility, and the—we were the secondhand kids. And I think people thought that this will stop. So I’m not sure if I remember anybody saying—maybe somebody said, You’ve gotta be crazy to do that. And they were right. [chuckle]

I think of your parents. And you know, most parents are hopeful their children do well in the academics, and they don’t, you know, they don’t struggle with how tough the classes are, and they get along with their classmates. But your parents were dealing on an entirely quantum different level of concern.

Of course. And if yeah; this is, this is a great conversation, because people don’t ask deep questions often. The whole idea that—and I think a lot of the Civil Rights movement worked this way. That the young people were doing things that the grownups couldn’t do, because in fact, they would lose their jobs. And they didn’t put us there; we put ourselves there and asked them to come with us. There’s a line in a freedom song, I’m on My Way to Freedom Land. And one of the lines; If you don’t go, don’t hinder me. And another line is, If my mama don’t go, I’ll go anyhow. It was about seeing a different vision, and hoping that it wouldn’t stay the same.

Minnijean Brown was suspended and expelled from Central High. Out of concern for her safety, she was transferred to a school in New York. She graduated from college and lived for many years in Canada. Now she’s back in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she continues her work as an educator and a crusader for civil rights and the environment. The events of 1957 surely shaped the rest of her life.

I got punished for the behavior that they were exhibiting. And it was very unfair. And I knew it was unfair, but it wasn’t shown as unfair. It was, She was a bad girl, she talked back. You know, I should have been perfect. Now, I understand that I needn’t have been perfect to go to Central High School, that those were outrageous expectations. But I was just sixteen; so I didn’t know what I know now.

And so there was a lot of learning that took place in those months, but much of it probably wasn’t academic.

I don’t remember a single thing. I don’t remember learning anything. I spoke French with a really terrible Southern accent, and when I went to this school in New York, this French teacher, I think I hurt her ears when I spoke French.

That’s where you went after you left Arkansas?

Yes. So I don’t remember learning any lessons.

Except hard knocks.

Except how, maybe how we survive in a difficult situation. But I was a bad girl, because I asked the history teacher, Why is it we only have one paragraph on slavery in this one-thousand-page American history book? And that we were all happy? You gotta be bad sometime. [chuckle] But that’s considered bad; that’s considered uppity.

And you did that at Little Rock?

I did.

You didn’t get shut down easily by any means.

Well, I’d ask it in a very Southern accent, in a very soft way. But I asked it all the same. And I think all of us did that. That we shouldn’t have had to be grateful to go into that brutal situation. And so one more little thing that I think is interesting, and I hope you have space for it. Someone did a doctoral dissertation on the females, gender issues at Little Rock, and talked to a group of White girls, forty years later. And said, We hated that Minnijean, we hated her; we hated her, we hated her. And he said, Why did you hate her? And they finally concluded, Because she walked the halls of Central High like she belonged there. Wow. Wow.

There you go. You were the object of much racism. I would wonder if it tended to make you want to dismiss and hate Whites.

Well, I guess I didn’t learn. [chuckle] That wasn’t really what I learned at Central. I learned that people can be used for bad purposes, if they allow. I think the mob was incited by the governor, the kids were acting on beliefs that had been part of our American belief system for a very long time.

So you’re giving them an out?

I’m not giving them an out, but I am what I’m trying to explain, especially to young people that there are structural things that have created our beliefs and our attitudes, and where we live, and how much money we make, and who’s valued and who isn’t; and that the only way that we can dismantle that is to pay attention. So I also know that as soon as I left Central High School, I forgot all about them, and went into the school that was integrated. I had a great time, I realized all those things about myself, which hadn’t been realized in my life before. I was arrested for sitting in, I’ve been in jail, I was in Mississippi for a time, I was really active at my college. It was an amazing, wonderful, hopeful time. And in that process, we have to work with other people, that not any one group can save the world alone. And I work with everybody, and will hang out with everybody, and will interact with everybody; and have had wonderful opportunities to do so. It’s an educational thing that has to take place everywhere. It has to be in the elementary schools, it has to be in high schools. It definitely has to be in the universities, that there is an obligation; we can’t just have like African American history over there, and mainstream history here, which doesn’t, you know—

Right; it’s not boutique.

Yeah.

It’s not boutique history.

You don’t get to shop around; it has to be embedded in all our social relations. How do we get here, and how do we get out?

Before what happened at the school, did you push the envelope, did you go drink at the other fountain, or slip into a place you weren’t supposed to be?

Well, you can’t really go into a place, ‘cause you’re not allowed. But I would, yes, drink out of the White fountain, or I would sometimes sit in the wrong place on the bus, and promptly get kicked off the bus. The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama had happened, but people had been doing that all along, because it seemed so ludicrous. It doesn’t make sense; it didn’t make sense then, it doesn’t make sense now.

What kind of kid were you? Were you fiery and an activist, or did that activism happen later?

Oh, I was—h-m, I’ve never been asked that question. I was concerned about things, and I argued with my parents during the Eisenhower-Stevenson election. And I told them, How can you vote for Eisenhower; you have to vote for Stevenson. Don’t ask me why.

But at that time in your school, would you have been voted most likely to …

No, not at all.

–to break the bounds and be part of a historical case and—

No. Absolutely not.

Were you quiet?

I was, I was a bookie; I read all the time. I thought I could sing, so I would try to sing every once in a while.

[chuckle]

But I don’t think anybody, I certainly didn’t anticipate that I would be the person I am now. Inside, I thought deeply about things; but outside, I don’t think I expressed it.

You’ve moved back to Arkansas, and you have occasion to drive by Central High School. What are the emotions you feel as you go by?

Well, I’m really involved, kind of, with Central High School because my daughter is a park ranger with the National Parks Service and she’s teaching me things. She is at a visitor center, so all kinds of people come in. People come in from all over the world; they tell her and the other rangers how Little Rock, the experience affected them fifty years ago, if they’re older. Young people come in and ask questions.

And the school and the government never gave you an apology for what happened?

Yes, in 1997—

Okay; this is many years—

I’m not sure—

–after the fact.

–if it was an apology. But the governor, who was Mike Huckabee, the President was Bill Clinton, and the mayor opened the door symbolically to allow for us to come in. That was very moving.

What do you think it is about you that allowed you to get through that as you did, and continue to fight the same battle in other ways, as you moved along?

M-m, well, it’s kind of, what—you know, you asked, why did we go to Central. Somebody had to do it. And we just happened to be the ones who did. And somebody’s gotta do all this other stuff too, individually, and collectively. And it keeps me—I work with lots of young people; it keeps me knowing what their issues are, it keeps me on the ground, not being in some kind of tower, not knowing what young people are concerned about. And it enriches me. It inspires me. It just keeps me going. I working with young people is so inspirational to me. And it also invigorates me, and I’m gonna be—I’m sixty-six. I need some of that energy to circle through me.

But the disappointments and the hardship you’ve experience along—and the losses in activism haven’t hardened your heart, haven’t made you have a sense of resignation about anything?

Well, I think they’ve given me the right to have a sharp tongue, and to challenge complacency and complicity. And I do that when I can. So I feel, both, I have the privilege of being an elder, as well as a Civil Rights person, to transfer from that time to now. Young people are, What is this about? I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense to me. Why doesn’t this change? Why are we in this state? Why are we so warlike? Why are we so violent? Why do we have the highest prison rate in the world? They’re still—they’re confused, and I’m confused; and we need to have these talks together, and so I continue to be reinvigorated. Sometimes I do get really cynical; I can do a really good cry in my pillow, I don’t hide my feelings anymore. I don’t feel—if I’m talking and somebody asks me something that takes me back I just go ahead and feel it. So there’s something to maturity.

What came first, your activist ideas or the experience at Little Rock?

That’s a great question. And I think it’s, I think I found who I was at our first press conference. They asked, Why do you want to go to Central High? And I didn’t say, Because it’s there, which is what a teenager would do. I said, When we are giving our lives in the war and working hard, it’s all right. But when we ask for equalization, we’re turned down. And I discovered that girl about fifteen years ago. And that was really special to me, because that’s who I am. Those are the beliefs I’ve had, I continue to have them. I sound so like me, me, me. But I look upon the Little Rock experience as a training ground for things that were to come in my life.

What was harder than that?

What was harder than that, I think, is watching my kids have to deal with the same kinds of things that I had to deal with, and that was—that’s been hard. Because the whole idea for desegregation in schools, for dismantling Jim Crow, for various civil rights acts, that the purpose of that, the purpose of going to Central High School was to stop it, change it, make it go away. And to have my own children and people’s children of various ethnicities and world views have these experience, this kind of experience, hurts me. And I’m very sorry that we haven’t done that whole work, we haven’t finished that work.

When you say we haven’t finished, how close are we?

I don’t know. I tell my kids, Put some rhinestones on my walker.

[chuckle]

Wheel me up. Because it looks like that’s my life’s work.

Yeah.

And it’s good work; it’s …

I mean, it’s a bad reason to have job security, racism.

Oh; well, It’s not even about, you know, like work. It’s not about a job. It’s just a way of life. It’s what I do.

And I hope Minnijean Brown Trickey keeps on doing what she’s doing – sharing her story of principle, passion and perseverance. A warm mahalo to her, with aloha, from her new friends in Hawaiʻi. If you’d like to share your thoughts with Minnijean, please send an email to Long Story Short through our website at www.pbshawaii.org and we’ll forward it . For now, as always, we have to keep this fascinating Long Story Short. Mahalo for joining us. I’m Leslie Wilcox. A hui hou kākou.

I gotta tell you. I’m really surprised that you live in Arkansas; so do many of the people who were at the high school when you were mistreated, and you’ve never really had any kind of outpouring of, Oh you know, those were different times, and we didn’t know better, or that was a poor way to handle it. Nothing like that. Not really; not one-to-one.

That’s the nature of the discussion of racism in the nation. We are doing it; we can’t do it. We have a hard time; we’re looking at, we’re watching scenarios where we can’t talk about it. What does that mean? What’s wrong with us? We can talk about everything else.